Kerry Beck's Blog

Wedding Bliss . . .

One week ago, our oldest daughter Ashley was married to Jesse Ortega. According to everyone that attended, it was beautiful and God-honoring. Now that the wedding is over, I’ve had time to reflect on why we put so much effort into planning the wedding.

When you look at the Old Testament, you see wedding celebrations for 7 days. That’s right…they celebrated and feasted for 7 days. When we started planning Ashley’s wedding, we wanted to make it a celebration of new life together. We wanted those who attended to see that God was the center of marriage and we wanted those who attended to celebrate with the Beck & Ortega family.

Steve had the honor of making the last toast. Let me share it with you.

We want to thank all of you for coming to celebrate the union of Ashley and Jesse …and the union of two families, the Beck’s and the Ortegas.

As I said in my prayer, it is amazing how many parables, stories and activities in the bible center around weddings. It seems to be God’s favorite illustration of His relationship to His people.

And God was using the culture of that day to communicate major truths to His people. The people of that day were consumed with weddings! In fact, their wedding parties sometimes lasted 7 days!

(we only have this place rented for one night!)

And the biggest the biggest faux paux at a wedding was to run out of wine. We have tried our best to make sure that doesn’t happen tonight!

But as you eat the meal …and drink the wine …and laugh together …and dance together …we want this to be a PICTURE of how God’s people will one day eat and drink (and maybe even dance) when we are with Him in eternity.

So our prayer is that YOU would join us and celebrate God’s mercy and His goodness as Isaiah says,

The LORD of hosts will make for all people
A feast of choice pieces,
A feast of wines on the lees,
Of fat things full of marrow,
Of well-refined wines on the lees.
“ Behold, this is our God;
We have waited for Him, and He will save us.
This is the LORD;
We have waited for Him;
We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”

Now it’s time for the NEXT part of the feast …it’s time to to cut the cake…

After the toast, Steve had several men tell him they have a different perspective on weddings. They had planned to spend as little money as possible on their daughters’ weddings. Now, they see another side of wedding celebrations. That does not mean you need to spend more money than you have on your weddings. Nor does it mean your daughter is Princess for the Day (ie Bridezilla), But, you should make this day a special celebration of two lives coming together as one, one in Christ!